Potato Museum gets support from grocery sales

Sobeys in Atlantic Canada will be selling special bags of potatoes in February to support the Canadian Potato Museum in western P.E.I.

Each bag of the heritage netted gems sold, packaged in sand-coloured paper bags, will see 25 cents donated to the O'Leary museum. Fifteen cents of that is coming from Elmsdale farmer John Griffin, the man who's supplying the potatoes.

"They're a non-profit museum here in western P.E.I. kind of representing the potato industry in Canada," said Griffin.

"They have a great facility and people who go there usually enjoy seeing what they have to offer and just not enough people know about it."

The other dime will come from Sobeys.

"Sobeys has always been a proud sponsor of local suppliers," said Charlottetown store manager Jeff Jenkins.

"The Canadian Potato Museum is a testament to a product that we grow very well on P.E.I. And, I mean, we're in the food business, so it's a perfect fit."

The grocery chain hopes to sell 80,000 bags. The $20,000 raised would represent more than 10 per cent of the museum's operating budget.

Museum director Bill MacKendrick said the promotion is about more than money. It will also provide crucial publicity, something the museum has done well with in the last couple of years. It was featured on a Canada Post stamp and on the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet science show.

"Now's the time to build on it and make this here a destination that people want to come to," said MacKendrick.

"Exposure means that people are talking about you and that's what we want to have."

Eight thousand people visited the Potato Museum last summer.